Animal of the Week May 30, 2017—what's the porpoise?

This week's Animal of the Week has been in the news lately, and for the worst
reasons. The vaquita, the world's smallest porpoise, is teetering on the brink of extinction, with as few as 30 individuals remaining.

One more step on the way too extinction

Although we think of whales and dolphins as being rather large animals, quite a few of them are in length as the average human being is tall, and the vaquita, the smallest of all the cetaceans (the family of whales, dolphins, and porpoises) is only around 1.4 m long (4' 6") and weighs only 54 kg (119 lb).

Confined to the Gulf of California, the vaquita (spanish for little cow) has probably never been especially numerous, but in 1996 when the species was listed as endangered, there were 600. By 2014 there were fewer than 100, now there are 30, maybe fewer—there are fewer vaquita than pupils in an average school class in the UK...a recently discovered dead vaquita represents more than 3% of the population.

The reason for the vaquita's precipitous and perilous decline is illegal fishing with gill nets for another endangered species, the totoaba—a fish of which the swim bladder is highly valued in Chinese cuisine. Although outlawed, fishing for totoaba with gill nets regularly ensnares vaquita, drowning them. The activity is so hard to police that conservationists now plan to capture several vaquita, and move them to a smaller bay that would be more easily protected and policed—such an endeavour has never been attempted for a cetacean. There once were talks of doing the same for the baiji, the Chinese river dolphin, but sadly efforts to save that came too late.

Let's hope they haven't come too late for the vaquita too. No-one really knows whether the vaquita will even survive being caught—some cetaceans get so stressed by human contact, even the best planned capture can be fatal—but without these efforts, the only thing that is certain is the extinction of the vaquita.